Sometimes minimalism is art, but here less is less.
As the title implies, Kuiper’s first novel is composed entirely of notes a mother and daughter leave for each other on the refrigerator door.
Mom is a busy obstetrician recently separated from her husband. Claire is her 15-year-old daughter. Despite a few random complaints, mostly about needing money to buy the lists of items Mom requests, Claire comes across from the beginning as too good to be true—independent yet loving and responsible. Mom comes across as very absentee and whiny. Her lack of a cell phone, a complaint of Claire’s, is a little odd, especially given her frequent notes about being called to an emergency delivery. Then notes back and forth about doctor appointments and mammograms start to appear. Around the same time, Mom starts leaving messages about a boy named Michael having called for Claire. A note refers to the lump Mom has in her breast. Soon she and Claire are arranging by note for Claire to accompany Mom to the lumpectomy. Claire grocery shops and cooks for Mom. Mom continues to work. Claire worries about Mom but is also dating Michael, whom Mom never gets around to meeting. Claire and Mom bicker over Michael and Claire briefly goes to stay with Dad. Mom admits she has cancer. Michael and Claire break up, get back together, break up again. Claire realizes how serious Mom’s condition is. Claire and Dad get Mom a wig for her chemo but Mom freaks out. Mom leaves petulant notes and then apologizes. Claire gets a little angry and then apologizes. Basically, the novel progresses from nice-normal to nice-sad to nice-supersad as Mom’s health deteriorates. Eventually, Claire is leaving notes to say she is in the backyard, and Mom’s notes say she’s resting. Claire leaves two last notes after Mom has died to say how much she loved Mom and to tell her about her new boyfriend James. All of which makes for an easy read for those looking for sad-lite.
Sometimes minimalism is art, but here less is less.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-06-137049-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2007
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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